After Saturday’s loss to the lowly Ottawa Senators, a should-be free-space for any team that fancies itself a contender, Calgary Flames interim head coach Geoff Ward was asked if his squad might be fighting a bit of mental fatigue.

It has, after all, been a rollercoaster campaign. So perhaps the week-long bye/all-star break was coming at a perfect juncture?

“There should not be mental fatigue at this time of year,” Ward replied. “It’s a good question to ask, but teams that are around at the end, they’re not mentally tired right now. If anything, they’re getting mentally stronger. Teams will raise their level right now, players will raise their level …

“The guys that know what it takes to win and perennially are winners and they’re in playoff situations, they get better right now. So for us, I sure hope there’s not mental fatigue.”

The Flames are not perennial winners. (Just a reminder, they haven’t qualified for the post-season in back-to-back springs since 2008 and 2009.)

They hope, however, to be trending in that direction.

Although fans were frustrated after Saturday’s stinker, a 5-2 loss to a rebuilding bunch that had yet to win in 2020, it’s not like the crew from Calgary was in some sort of tail-spin before their getaways.

“Hopefully, we use this break and we really catapult ourselves forward and get some real momentum,” said Flames captain Mark Giordano after the loss in Ottawa. “As bad as this one feels, we’ve won six of our last eight, if you want to look at it that way. Let’s take the positive from that and move on.”

The Flames have weathered their share of on-ice issues — an inconsistent start, a six-game winless skid that felt like an unstoppable free-fall, the fact Johnny Hockey has too often looked like Johnny Who?

There have also been a couple of curveball storylines — TJ Brodie’s scary collapse in practice and the revelations of past misconduct that came back to bite Bill Peters, forcing his resignation as bench boss at the Saddledome.

The top of the Pacific Division standings are currently as crowded as a downtown C-Train platform at 5:01 p.m., and the Flames (26-19-5) are right in that mix, one point back of the first-place Vancouver Canucks and also tied for second/third/both wild-card spots.

“I think we’re maturing,” said Flames general manager Brad Treliving prior to that disappointing defeat in Ottawa. “Everyone wants to keep talking about our start — we’re a long way from the start. I think if we look at it from about the third week of November, it’s been a pretty solid record and we’ve played some solid hockey.

“And I think we’re learning. We’ve played a lot of close games. We’ve become comfortable in those games. And when I say comfortable, previously, we would get a little bit excited sometimes to, all of a sudden, try to take a 1-0 game or a 1-1 game and turn it into a 3-1 game. Sometimes, you can’t do that. Sometimes, you have to take what’s given and to be a good team, you have to become really comfortable in 2-1 games — where there’s a lot of 50-50 shifts where stuff ain’t happening.

“I always say it’s like pool — ‘It’s not what you make, it’s what you leave.’ So just being comfortable in that environment, where things are tight and it’s not always the sexy play, it’s maybe just advancing the puck, to me, those are experiences and as you go through, they keep teaching you how to win. And that’s what I think our group is learning. To me, learning how to win close games and be comfortable in that environment where you don’t have to open things up and take chances … I think that’s winning hockey.”

Since taking the helm as interim head coach at the end of November, Ward has talked often about learning to be a winning team.

Which begs the question, where is this squad — in his estimation — on that quest?

A couple of days before the break, the insightful skipper explained the progression.

Rasmus Andersson attempts to box out Pierre Engvall of the Toronto Maple Leafs on Jan. 16. Calgary won the game 2-1 in a shootout.Claus Andersen/Getty Images

“I think you go through certain stages,” Ward said. “First, you go from a nobody to an upstart. When you’re a nobody, you’re sort of losing all the time. And then you learn to win a little bit and on any given night, you can beat another team, but you really aren’t reliable in terms of what your process is and how often you win. Then, I think you become a winning team with a little bit more time and experience, and by that I mean your record is around .500 or a little above .500. You learn more lessons and then you become a team that wins on a regular basis and you’re not just a winning team now, you’re talked about in the circles of being a contending team.”

Just a reminder, as you read the rest of this answer, that Ward owns a 2011 Stanley Cup ring, a memento from his stint as an assistant coach in Boston.

“And then you go from being a contending team to learning how to be a champion, and some special teams will go from being a champion to learning how to be a dynasty,” he continued. “At every step along the way, there are things that need to happen, there are lessons that need to be learned and there are processes that need to be reinforced as you move along that curve. How long that takes depends on the team and the individual people on the team.

“Where are we at right now? I think we’re a team that is learning how to be a contending team. I would put us in that category right now. We’re making steps. But in every step of the process or the evolution of the team, there are pitfalls you can get into. With us, it’s no different. We have lessons to learn. We have things we need to reinforce in our process so these things become like a science experiment — you get the same result every time you do it.”

This current cast of Flames isn’t going to win 50 regular-season games, like they did in 2018-19. Apparently, they’re not going to fill the net at the same clip, either. (The offence really sputtered on the road-trip to Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, with most of their go-to guys ice-cold as they packed for their beach vacations.)

Nobody will be complaining, though, if they can win a few more playoff games.

That’s why their recent success in squeakers has been such a point of pride. The Flames’ past six Ws have been of the one-goal variety.

Flames celebrate a goal by Johnny Gaudreau against the Edmonton Oilers on Jan. 11.Jim Wells/Postmedia

“We don’t need to be winning games by four or five goals,” stressed alternate captain Sean Monahan. “You can feel the confidence in the room. Right now, it’s not about guys scoring 100 or 120 points or whatever it is. It’s about the two points every night. That’s our mindset, and that’s a team mindset right now. Points are one thing and yeah, you want to produce and you want to be one of those guys. But at the end of the day, you really want to go into the post-season and do work there.”

Last season, the Flames hit the bye on a nine-game point-spree. They never seemed like the same team afterward, leading to a first-round playoff flop.

The 2019-20 campaign hasn’t been a smooth cruise — Saturday’s loss to the cellar-dwelling Senators was another reminder of that — but the skating stars feel like there is a lot to be optimistic about.

“I think we’ve done a really good job of just finding ways to win games,” said forward Sam Bennett. “We’re not really blowing any teams out. I think a lot of our wins have been one-goal games, and that’s how you’re going to win games in the playoffs. It’s going to be tight hockey like that.

“We won so many games early (in 2018-19), we were so good early in the season, and then near the end, we kind of started to go down a little bit. I think we’re going the opposite way this year, and that’s the way that you really have to go into the playoffs. We just seem to be slowly, gradually getting better.”

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